(If you’re interested in hearing some of the music I talk about in this piece, go here to hear The Vanguards final album, The Last Supper)
John Treanor (1953 – 2001)
I’m sitting with my daughter on a hillside under an oak tree in the long dusk of a Texas summer at Barton Springs, thinking about my friend Mambo John Treanor. For so many years he came to this sacred place, often on his bicycle, to swim a mile in the cold water of this spring-fed pool. It’s a tough sell convincing people this 68-degree water, so icy in the hot months, actually feels warm when the weather turns cold, but it does. No one knew this better than John, who would swim here anytime.
Sometimes I swim laps like John, but mostly I just frolic underwater by the diving board where 10 or 15 feet down the water rushes out of an underground fissure. Everyone who comes here has their own style, their favorite place to sit, their favorite place to swim. Barton Springs is unique to Austin, Texas, and so was Mambo John Treanor.
I moved to Austin almost 25 years ago, but I already knew about the Springs: my father went to UT, my mother was a nurse at Seton Hospital, and my sister took her undergraduate degree here. I remember my Dad talking about how the pool was almost out in the country when he and my mom lived here in the late ’40’s, early ’50’s. So I had some feeling for this lovely city (it was still more like a town when I first moved here), based on many visits and the fond reminisces of my family.
But I moved here for the music! I started college in Denton, Texas, but I was coming down here whenever I could, and as I gradually started spending more and more time at the University of Saloon instead of N.T.S.U. (now N.T.U.), moving to Austin was the obvious thing to do. When I look back on that first year or two I lived here and think about the people I saw play, usually for next to nothing, I’m still a little startled. A partial list, off the top of my head: Frank Zappa (twice), Phil Woods, Tony Williams (there were maybe 10 people there), John Prine, Dizzy Gillespie, the Julliard String Quartet, Gary Burton with Steve Swallow and Pat Metheny (the opener was Leo Kottke)… well, you get the idea. But on top of that embarrassment of riches was an amazing array of local players. You know some of the names, others you may never have heard of, but talent ran deep, like a seam of gold. For a young player it was heaven, because I could go hear world-class players for free (or close to it: we used to joke about the guy at the door that would holler, “A buck! But I drink here all the time!”) every single night I wasn’t gigging myself…and go swimming every day at Barton Springs!
One of the musicians I noticed almost right away was a marvelous drummer named John Treanor. He had all these great chops, but an even more amazing feel. He was a drum god to me. It was a long time before I imagined myself playing with him; I felt fortunate just to hear him play. Over the ensuing years, in groups like 47x Its Own Weight, Minor Miracle, Beto y los Fairlanes, sometimes Extreme Heat, and others, I got lesson after lesson in Superior Drumming, Sensitive Rhythm Section Accompaniment, and Total Musicianship.
In an environment like that, you either get to work, learn how to play, or get the hell out of the way. Too stubborn to quit, I opted for the former course, but in the years that followed I continued to listen to and marvel at John’s beautiful playing.
The years flew by, and a decade later I was playing in a group called the Vanguards. Originally they had been a rockabilly trio. The two brothers who were the founding members alternated on guitar and bass, lead and backup vocals. After a short experiment with a piano player, they recruited me to join the band on acoustic and electric basses, and so it was for several years. It was a killer band. My first gig with them was a New Year’s Eve gig. I remember they’d given me a couple of tapes to learn their repertoire from, and how daunted I was when I realized there was something like 80 tunes on those two tapes! Though the songs were simple enough on the surface, each one had some quirky little thing about it that kept me from ever being able to coast. It was a considerable feat of memorization, as well…just remembering 80 song titles alone-which song is which?- was a real challenge. And there was no way they were gonna let me do the jazzbo thang and have a bunch of charts onstage. The gig was rock, not read!
But thanks to the Vanguards, I learned so much about Rockabilly, its sources and outgrowths. Being an Austin band (and a hard-working one at that), we had a ton of blues, R&B, and country tunes in the book as well. As time went by we became more or less a band that played Americana. Dancers loved us. We weren’t rich or famous or the most popular unit in town, but we rocked, and we were loved. Then I had a rather severe falling out with one of the brothers, which ended with me throwing PA gear at him (I used to be kinda hotheaded). I missed, so I took some time off, started a business with my wife, enjoyed my baby girl, and practiced my brains out every single day. But the lure of the Vanguards was powerful, and before long we were playing again, now augmented by Jim Trimmier on saxophone and vocals and George Rarey on third (!) guitar and vocals…our sound was getting HUGE!
Enter Mambo.
We’d had drummer trouble (which may turn out to be the name of my autobiography, if I ever write one), and after our original drummer left, we began using a remarkable cast of players: Chris Layton was a regular (when he was in town, which wasn’t all that often), so was Tommy Taylor from Eric Johnson’s band (it might surprise you to know he’s one of the coolest surf drummers in the universe!), David Fore from the infamous psychedelic punk band Bubble Puppy, and the incredible B.E. “Frosty” Smith. None of these cats were available full-time, though, and the Vanguards were the type of ensemble that needed a full on participating member.
We’d been engaged in a long run at the Black Cat Lounge, drawing great crowds and getting pretty nutty. The owner, the late Paul Sessums, told us rather ruefully one night that we’d enticed the audience to a record-shattering amount of beer swilling. But we were being noticed, and unbeknownst to us, John Treanor had been checking us out night after night, growing increasingly obsessed with our peculiar amalgam of American musics. Now we’d never approached John for two simple reasons: we didn’t think a fire-breathing fusion monster like him would be interested in our rootsy band, and even if he was, we figured he would be way too busy. Not only was he interested, but after waiting a long time for us to GET IT, he finally took it upon himself to approach us. We immediately leaped at the chance, and our first gig with him, at the Ritz Theater, was pure magic. He was the missing ingredient, and each one of us (Mambo included) took a giant leap forward in musical consciousness that night.
We were transformed. Having such a sympathetic and musical drummer prompted lengthy rehearsals, feverish writing, and gigs that seemed to venture farther and farther into the cosmos. At one such gig, a Mardi Gras gig where we played on a boat on the river in downtown San Antonio, we dressed up in the most outlandish garb, and suddenly the transformation was complete: no longer a band, we had become a tribe. As time went by and we embarked on more and more road trips, an almost Shamanistic sense of ourselves took us deeper and deeper into a mysterious realm. Some folks probably took our garb, mojo, and demeanor as mere kitsch, but something far deeper was at work. In fact we were poor men possessed by music. We would go on these huge road trips out west, living outdoors, often for weeks on end. We’d pull into a club and within an hour the stage would be covered with candles and decorated with roadkill, cowskulls, and odd bits of road detritus, the mic stands wrapped in chili pepper lights. People would simply gawk at us, but then we would play and whoever was there was ours. In the years that followed, as I traveled hundreds of thousands of miles with Chris Duarte, I realized that the Vanguards knew what every nomadic tribe knows: you bring who you are with you. We had become an amazing band with a powerful identity.
It will probably come as no surprise to you that as we approached real success it all blew up in our faces. Drugs, sex, and betrayal took the band down with stunning swiftness. From a hugely successful appearance on a nationwide TV show one day to utter ruin the next, we managed to outdo most of the horrible VH-1 stories you hear. It’s a long, often sordid tale, and I have no desire to tell it right now, but suddenly Mambo was looking at a prison stretch, and all seemed lost.
It may seem to you as I wind through this tale that by telling you about the Vanguards that I’ve lost track of my subject, so I’ll tell you right now: that group was his favorite of all the bands he ever played in.
In that darkest time, all our hopes dashed, Mambo John Treanor stepped forward and revealed himself to be a man of real stature. With prison and financial ruin looming over him he drew himself up to full height, raised his head, and refused to succumb to despair. We attacked our gigs with ferocious abandon, and with El Reno Federal Penitentiary scant weeks away, in December of 1990 the Vanguards recorded “The Last Supper” at Spencer Starnes’ studio nestled in the hill country near Lake Travis.
It’s an amazing record. Recorded in very little time with very little money, there’s a spirit that permeates the album that you simply can’t buy. As we said “goodbye to all that,” the sorrow and joy of our time together informs every note on the recording.
I was talking to a fellow Vanguard about Mambo and those times, and I realized that, in all the literally thousands of gigs I’ve played, almost all the MUSIC I remember (as opposed to peripheral data, like “the time we blew up the transformer,” or, “remember when the club owner shorted us with the handgun on her desk?”) was at one Vanguard gig or another. One such night was the New Year’s Eve gig we played at the 311 Club right after we finished “The Last Supper.” That night we conjured up a fierce storm of rage and love such as I have rarely heard from anyone.
I’ll never forget it.
Then Mambo was gone, but the band that had been around for years before he joined it now made absolutely no sense without him. We went on for awhile, Jeff Hodges (may he Rest In Peace) taking on the daunting task of filling his chair and doing a fine job of it, too, but it was over. There is perhaps no higher tribute than to simply say, “that person is indispensable.”
Mambo was indispensable.
By the following September, I was playing my last Vanguards gig and my first Chris Duarte Group gig, both at the Continental Club on the same night, and I was embarked yet again on a Spirit Journey with another incredible musician.
Which brings me to a last story about Mambo John Treanor. Chris and I went and saw Mambo several times while he was doing time at the Federal Pen in El Reno, Oklahoma. The first time we visited, he was depressed and frightened. Who wouldn’t be? But as the months went by, stopping in every chance we got (we were criss-crossing the country constantly), we noticed a peculiar thing: as time went by everyone grew to like and respect Mambo. The prisoners, the screws, the warden, everybody knew who the Snake Man was…it was Mambo. I can tell you this just doesn’t happen, yet it did with this man, and I know why.
Mambo was a free man.
Almost ten years later, as so many pause to remember this Free Man, I’m left with so many beautiful memories. We spent so much time together, traveled so many miles, and endured triumphs and hardships with humor and humility. In the last couple of months we got to play a couple of Vanguard gigs with all the members present, and once again, as though no time had passed, as though no illness was present, we levitated to a realm of Spirit and Love and Freedom.
When I jump into Barton Springs, the cold water hits me like a hammer, my heart races and I gasp for air…and then this lovely feeling of peace and connection comes over me. That’s what it was like playing with Mambo, and being his friend: the bracing, shocking joy of Freedom.
Rest in Peace, my friend. I love you.
John Jordan
August 20, 2001
